An apostille is a term from international law which describes the verification of the correctness of a signature that appears on documents and public certificates, such as a marriage certificate, birth certificate and so on. As part of the verification, the apostille verifies that the certificate is indeed original and official and that it has been issued by the authority which is authorized to do so.

Also, an apostille can confirm the authority of a notary. Apostille trust on the verification of the notary’s signature on the document, as well as on the confirmation of the fact that the notary who signed the same document is indeed a certified notary by law.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs grants apostille approval only to public documents signed by the authority official who produced the requested document. In contrast, notarized documents that require an apostille certificate from the court will only be approved if the notary appears on the list of notaries authorized by the Ministry of Justice.

After reviewing and approving the documents and paying the fee, Foreign Ministry or court officials will issue (depending on the type of certificate) in accordance with the wording set out in the Hague Convention.

We live in a global time more than ever – you can communicate with people from the other side of the world at the touch of a button. At the same time, there are quite a few arrangements that we must make if we are interested in issuing foreign citizenship, moving to another country for study or work or doing business abroad.
If we want documents that we translate from Hebrew into the language of the destination country to be legally acceptable, we must translate them through a certified notary and provide them with an apostille certificate in accordance with the Hague Convention.
In recent years, more and more Israelis are required to obtain apostille approval as part of the process of obtaining foreign citizenship. In order to obtain a foreign passport, you must translate a variety of documents from Hebrew into the official language of the country for which you are interested in obtaining a passport. For example, if you are interested in obtaining a Polish passport, you will need to translate birth certificates, marriage certificates and various documents from the IDF from Hebrew to Polish.
Nevertheless, independent translation of official documents is not sufficient to give them legal validity in the destination country. You must provide the translated documents to a notary who will guarantee that they have been well translated. A translation without a notarized seal will be legally invalid and may not be used for the purpose of obtaining foreign citizenship.
However, as noted earlier, a notarized certificate is not sufficient for a document to be legally valid in a foreign country. After receiving the notary’s certificate, you will need to obtain an apostille certificate stating that the notary is indeed legally qualified.

The price to be paid for an apostille certificate is set by the State Department and changes from time to time. Today, the price of an apostille certificate is NIS 35. It is worth emphasizing that the cost of approvals for countries that are not members of the Apostille Convention such as Canada and Taiwan depends on the procedures established in those countries.